MD03 - Criminal Intent

by Sheldon Siegel

  “Were you able to reach Carl Ellis?” she asks.

  “Briefly,” I say. “I caught him by phone at the Ritz. I was surprised he talked to me.”

  “And?”

  “He said he left Big Dick’s house with Petrillo at a quarter to two. And that the studio project will proceed as planned.”

  “Anything about a competing proposal?”

  “He said it was too late to consider alternate plans. They’re moving forward.”

  “And Angel’s behavior?”

  “He said she’d had too much to drink.” I tell her he had no idea where Kent is.

  She nods. “His story squares with Little Richard’s.”

  “Yes it does.” I tell her Ellis was on his way back to Vegas.

  Rosie shakes her head and says, “It doesn’t help.”

  “Did you expect him to confess?”

  “No.” Then she adds, “I need you to take a trip to Vegas—sooner rather than later.”

  “I’ll go down there in the next couple of days.”

  She shifts gears. “Sorry your date with Leslie got screwed up.”

  “We’ll get together another time.” I decide to leave out any mention of our little high-tech rendezvous on the Golden Gate Bridge.

  “I hope things work out for you.” She reflects and adds, “If it’s what you want.”

  I look at my ex-wife and say, “I think it is.”

  “Do you love her?”

  Now it’s my turn to pause. “I’m pretty sure.”

  “Does she love you?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “Yes or no?”

  “She’s working at it.”

  “Are you ready?”

  “I think so.”

  “Do you want to get married?”

  “Not anytime soon. We both know the risks.”

  “That we do.” She looks at Grace and says, “She asked me about you and Leslie.”

  “Me too.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “Nothing major will happen anytime soon.”

  “How did she react?”

  “She’s taking a wait-and-see attitude.”

  “She’s wise beyond her years.”

  “She’s been through this before.”

  “It’s different this time,” she says. “She has good instincts. She knows you’re serious. She wouldn’t have asked me about it otherwise.” She reflects and adds, “She has a lot on her plate right now.”

  “I know.”

  “She’ll need a period of adjustment for this. I need you to be gentle with her, Mike.”

  “I will.”

  She swallows and says, “It’s nice to have somebody to hold you at night. I miss that.”

  Beautiful Rosie. I’m falling in love with Judge Leslie Shapiro, but Rosita Carmela Fernandez will always be my soul mate. “You’ll never be alone, Rosie.”

  She gets a faraway look in her eyes. “If things don’t work out with Leslie—,” she says. Then she stops herself.

  “What is it, Rosie?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Come on.”

  “I can’t.” She mulls things over for a moment and changes the subject again. “How much longer do you want to keep doing this?”

  “Hanging out with you?”

  “Practicing law.”

  I go with the standard answer. “As long as I can. It’s what I do.”

  “Don’t be glib. Don’t you ever get tired of dealing with other people’s problems?”

  “Sometimes. It’s still easier than being a priest.”

  “How’s that?”

  “If a defense attorney screws up, the client ends up in jail. If a priest screws up, the client ends up in hell.”

  “Some people think it’s about the same.”

  “Not the way I learned it.”

  “Do you think it might be time to take a break?”

  “Maybe. I’m not sure what I would do with myself.”

  “You could hang out with Grace and Leslie. You could even spend some time with me. You know. Go out for coffee or something appropriately platonic for two old friends.”

  “I’d like that.”

  “Or you could even do something useful. Did you hear anything more from the dean?”

  My alma mater, Boalt Law School, received a large donation to start a program to give law students hands-on experience working on death penalty cases. They’ve been looking for somebody to supervise the clinic. Dean Berring thinks I have the right stuff. I’m not so sure.

  “He called again,” I say.

  “You’d be perfect,” she says.

  “He doesn’t realize how godawful I am at administration. The program would go broke in a year.”

  She gives me a knowing smile. Rosie is very familiar with my shortcomings with business and money. She will always be the managing partner of our firm. “I think Professor Michael Daley has a nice ring to it,” she says.

  So do I. “I’d miss the courtroom.”

  “You could train a dozen young attorneys every year to do what you do. You could hang out in Berkeley. You could chase pretty young coeds.”

  “Now, that would be fun.”

  “Why are you trying to talk yourself out of it?” she asks.

  “I’m just not sure I want to do it.”

  “You’re going to be fifty next year, Mike.”

  “Which means I can do this for at least another twenty years.”

  “Don’t you want to retire someday?”

  “We can’t afford it. Grace won’t get out of law school for another fifteen years.”

  “What about all the money you put away in the Fernandez and Daley Keogh Plan?”

  “Twenty-seven thousand dollars doesn’t go as far as it used to.”

  She feigns exasperation. “You’re going to do this until you drop, aren’t you?”

  She knows me too well. “Probably. I can’t seem to let go.”

  “We’re not as young as we used to be.”

  “We’re not as old as we’re going to be.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I’d think about it.”

  She sighs. “It wouldn’t kill you to take a job where you might get a regular paycheck.”

  “I wouldn’t know what to do with it. Besides, I wouldn’t want to be responsible for breaking up Fernandez and Daley.”

  “I’ll understand.”

  “Maybe it’s something you should think about,” I say. “I could mention it to the dean.”

  “I’m a trial lawyer, Mike. I’m not a teacher.”

  “Sure you are. You taught me everything I know about sex.”

  She smiles. “That was like teaching a pre-schooler. The job at Boalt would require me to teach law students.”

  “Do you want me to say something to the dean?”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  She’ll never do it. There’s an excitement in her eyes when she’s in court. It would be very difficult for her to give it up. “How are you feeling?” I ask.

  “Fair.” She turns serious. “I spend my life waiting for test results.”

  “You’re going to be fine.”

  “I hope so, Mike.”

  I walk over to her and give her a hug. As I turn to leave, I see her looking at Grace, who is curled up with a Winnie the Pooh that she got at Disneyland. “She’s beautiful,” Rosie says.

  “She has your eyes.”

  Rosie gives me a knowing grin. “She’s going to break a few hearts.”

  “Just like her mom.” We look into each other’s eyes. There are tears in hers. “She’s scared, Rosie,” I say.

  Her lips turn down. “I know.” A year ago, we would have been sitting on the sofa drinking wine. Now, Rosie drinks a lot of water. It’s almost as if she thinks she can wash the cancer out of her system. “So am I.”

  “It’s okay to be scared.”

  “I know that, too.” She extends her hand to me. I take hers in
mine. “I’ve got everything worked out,” she says. “I made a deal with God.”

  “You did?”

  “Yeah. Didn’t you do that when you were growing up?”

  “All the time. I still do.” I smile. “So what’s your deal?”

  “I promised God I would stop swearing if I can live long enough to see Grace’s graduation from high school.”

  “I see. And have you negotiated a deal to see Grace’s graduation from Cal?”

  “Not yet. I’m having my people get in touch with God’s. I was talking to Father Aguirre over at St. Peter’s. He said God is going to launch a website. You’ll be able to do everything by e-mail.”

  “Even confessions?”

  “Yes. You’ll go straight to the top. It will cut out the need for a middleman.”

  “What about the clergy?”

  She gives me a wry grin. “They’ll be necessary to perform ceremonies like weddings and funerals, but there will be cutbacks and downsizings.”

  “Sort of like what happened to live bank tellers after they put ATMs on every corner?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Sounds like I got out of the business just in time.” I lean over and kiss her on the cheek. “You’re a marvel, Rosita.”

  She kisses me back, lightly on the lips. “What do you think about my deal?” she asks.

  “It’s a pretty good one.”

  She turns serious. “But do you think God will go for it? You were the priest. You had the pipeline. You must know something about deals with God.”

  “I’ve made a few of them over the years, too, Rosie.”

  “Did they work?”

  “Most of the time.” But not all the time.

  “Do you still believe that God listens?”

  “I think so.”

  “Do you think God’s listening to me right now?”

  “I’m sure of it.”

  She looks back at Grace. Tears stream down her face. “I just want to see how she turns out when she grows up.”

  “You will,” I whisper.

  “Promise?”

  “I promise.”

  # # #

  It’s a few minutes before midnight when I open the door to my apartment just behind the Larkspur fire station. I toss my jacket onto the beat-up oatmeal-colored sofa and I pull the last Diet Dr Pepper from the refrigerator that’s been sitting in the kitchen since the fifties. I salute the dishes that are stacked in the sink. I set the soda down on my butcher block table and I hit the “play” button on my answering machine. There are messages from all the local TV stations and newspapers. An unlisted number isn’t much good in our high-tech world.

  I listen to a message from Nicole Ward. “Just confirming our meeting tomorrow morning,” she says. It’s only ten hours away. “We should have a great deal to talk about.”

  The final message is from another familiar source. “Michael,” the husky voice says, “it’s Leslie. Please call me on my cell. I’ll be waiting up for your call. I have a surprise for you.”

  I punch in Leslie’s number. A sexy voice answers on the first ring. “Hello, Michael,” she whispers.

  “How did you know it was me?”

  “I give this number to a very select group of people.”

  “I’m honored.”

  “You should be.”

  “You said you had a surprise for me.”

  “I do. I heard you had a tough day.”

  “I did.”

  “There’s a beautiful, naked, sexy woman. She wants to see you.”

  Damn. “I thought we rescheduled for tomorrow night, Leslie. It’s a little late for me to come into the city.”

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Come into your bedroom, Michael. I’ve been waiting for you.”

  It’s so hard to find judges who make house calls. I can feel my heart starting to pound. I walk across my living room and open the door to my bedroom. I find Leslie lying in bed with a sheet pulled over her. She’s still holding her cell phone. I ask, “Why didn’t I hear your cell phone ring?”

  “I put it on vibrate mode. I wanted to surprise you.”

  “You did. It’s very sweet of you to come over, Leslie.”

  She smiles and says, “I told you I don’t like to grant continuances.”

  *****

  Chapter 10

  “They Found Him”

  “Fort Point was built in the 1850s. It has witnessed the Civil War, two world wars, countless earthquakes and the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge.”

  — Golden Gate National Recreation Area information pamphlet.

  “Are you awake, Mick?”

  “I am now, Pete.” I fumble the phone and struggle to get my bearings. I can feel Leslie’s breath on my cheek. Her eyes are closed. I whisper, “What time is it, Pete?”

  “A few minutes after six.”

  “Don’t you ever sleep?”

  “You don’t have to get snippy.”

  A job with regular hours is sounding better all the time. I turn on the light. Leslie opens her eyes. She leans back and gives me an inquisitive look. Then she pulls the sheet over her body. She mouths the word, “Rosie?”

  I shake my head.

  She tries again. “Who?”

  I cover the mouthpiece of the phone and say, “Pete.”

  She sighs. Then she leans back onto the pillow.

  Pete tries again. “Mick? Are you listening?”

  “Yeah.”

  He hesitates and asks, “Are you by yourself?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Right.” I can hear the chuckle in his voice when he says, “Rosie?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Good for you.”

  “Shut up, Pete.”

  “Anybody I know?”

  “No.”

  “When do I get to meet her?”

  “We’ll talk about it another time.”

  “Same old story. I’m working and you’re fooling around.”

  I sit up and say, “You have my undivided attention. Why did you call?”

  “They found him.”

  “Who?”

  “Martin Kent.”

  Yes! “Where?”

  “Fort Point.”

  Huh? It’s a restored Civil War-era installation at the base of the south anchorage of the Golden Gate Bridge. “What the hell was he doing there?”

  “He washed up next to the retaining wall. He’s dead, Mick.”

  Hell. “Did he jump?”

  “I don’t know. I heard about it on the police band. They’ve already dispatched a couple of black-and-whites.”

  “Where are you?”

  “On my way to the fort.”

  “I’ll meet you there as soon as I can.”

  I’m pulling on a pair of slacks when I hear Leslie’s voice from behind me. “This is becoming a familiar story,” she says.

  Busted again. I turn to her and say, “I’m sorry.” I tell her about Kent. “I have to get to Fort Point.”

  She runs a finger across her lip. “Do you think the relationship gods are trying to tell us something here?”

  “I wouldn’t read too much into it.”

  Her eyes turn softer. “You really have to go, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”